


Your Eyes Have Their Silence

by dashakay



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: F/M, Joctavia, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He holds out his arm to her like an offering. She notices drops of blood staining the white of his shirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Eyes Have Their Silence

In the dark of artificial Ceres night Octavia sits on her balcony, wrapped in her bathrobe, nursing a glass of bad whiskey. It stings as it slides down her throat. She closes her eyes and savors the burn. It’s been too long.

She’s been on something of a health kick lately, turning over a new leaf and all that. Waking to 0500 alarms, punishing pre-work gym workouts, spending a fortune on supposedly organic soy isolate bulgogi meals, no booze, no bars, no men. She’s been flushing out the toxins of her past life to start anew.

Tonight she’s tired. Tired of busting the same asshole gangsters, tired of the paperwork, of sucking up to Shaddid, of the claustrophobia from living in this fucking rock, even if it’s the only home she’s ever known. She has a giant splotch of a bruise on her calf from a tweaked-out Loca Greiga girl kicking her with a pair of metal-toed work boots. Her head aches from clenching her jaw all day.

More terrible whiskey then, leaving a glowing trail behind on its way to her stomach.

For just a minute, she allows herself the luxury of fantasizing about the sound of waves breaking on the shore of Molokaʻi, the real sun’s rays warming her skin. She breathes in the scent of salt and digs her toes in the sand, opening her eyes to gaze at the true, blue sky. Here she exists in utter peace, seamlessly merged with nature.

The bright colors and warm breeze dissolve into watery nothingness and she’s back on her balcony. She knows she’ll never make it to Molokaʻi, except when immersed in her favorite Trina Tang yoga vid. Even if she won the Super Ceres Lotto, the weight of gravity on Earth would crush her fragile Belter bones. Like it or not, she’s stuck here for life.

Something is wrong with the air tonight. The faint artificial breeze smells faintly of sulfur, like rotten eggs and unwashed bodies. She pours more whiskey in her glass and wonders if it might be more efficient just to drink straight from the bottle. She tosses back a shot without even flinching.

“Atta girl,” she hears a low voice say. Without even turning her head, she knows it’s him. Of course it’s him. It wouldn’t be a shitty Saturday night without him.

She sets her glass down. He’s leaning against the wall in a crumpled-looking trench coat, that stupid hat in his hands.

“What are you doing here, Miller?” She hears her voice call him by his last name and it hurts, just a little. Once upon a time, they were Joe and Octavia, at least when they were alone together. Calling him by his last name still makes everything feel sore and fresh.

Miller’s arms shrug. “Was in the neighborhood.” He gestures towards the bottle. “Got any of that for me?”

She pours him a slug and hands him the glass.

He drinks the whole thing in one long swallow. Miller shakes his head and grimaces. “That’s some terrible shit.”

Octavia nods. “You okay?” she says. It’s dark here in the shadows of her balcony and she can’t read his expression.

Miller shrugs off his coat and pushes up his sleeve. She catches sight of something wrapped around his arm and a dark stain soaking through it. “Got kind of cut tonight.”

“What happened?” It’s too dim out here to tell if it’s serious. She suppresses a sigh. Trouble constantly follows Miller like an annoying little brother.

“It’s nothing,” he says with another shrug.

She stands up, pulling the flannel of her robe around her. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you patched up.”

*

As she rummages in her medicine cabinet for plasters, she remembers all the times she’s fixed him up in this bathroom—a black eye here, scratches from a psychotic woman there. She finds a bottle of antiseptic and the box of plasters behind some old bottles of foundation and moisturizer. Miller sits, obedient for once, on the toilet seat, eyes closed and the fringe of his hair falling around his face.

“Let me see,” she says and he holds out his arm to her like an offering. She notices drops of blood staining the white of his shirt.

The wound on his forearm isn’t deep and he’s no longer bleeding. “You probably don’t need stitches, but you might want to go to the urgent clinic anyhow.”

Miller shakes his head. “I’m not waiting six hours to have some medic tell me I don’t need stiches.”

She wets a sterile pad with the antiseptic and touches it to his skin. He gasps and she feels the muscles under his skin stiffen. “What happened?” she asks.

“It was nothing,” he says, his voice so soft it’s almost a whisper. “Routine domestic call. Dad shot Mom and then himself. Had to sit with the kids until Social Services came. The oldest one got me with his sticker when we tried to peel him off his mother’s body.”

Miller looks up at her, his eyes hooded. For a moment, she thinks about the little boy who lost both his parents before he was three, who rummaged through garbage cans for his food and slept in alleys until he was captured and taken into care. She remembers all the secrets he once whispered to her in the safety of night and her bed.

“Doesn’t sound like nothing to me.” She methodically dabs at the cut until most of the blood is cleaned away. The cut is about three centimeters long, just short enough to be covered by one of the larger plasters in the box. She presses it to his warm skin. “Good as new.”

He pushes his hair out of his face. “Thanks, Octavia.”

Octavia, not Muss. Octavia—the name he cried out the first time they made love, as he slowly slid into her. Octavia, he moaned as he came. Octavia. Four syllables, raspy in his throat.

Miller stands and he seems to fill the small bathroom with his lanky limbs. Her breath catches in her throat. She can smell his sweat and blood and the liquor on his breath.

He touches her face with one of his long fingers, traces the line of her jaw. “I can always count on you to fix me.”

She almost laughs and cries at the same time because if there’s one person who’s not fixable, it’s Miller. She knows. She tried for too long.

Part of her wants to kiss him, to press her cheek against the grain of the stubble on his chin. That part of her wants to take him to the bedroom and lose herself in him once again. But she remembers what the mornings are like, how she feels when she’s broken her own promises once again.

Octavia lifts her chin and straightens her spine. “It’s late. Time for you to go home, Joe.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles as if he knows exactly what she’s thinking. “Yeah.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

Another one of his expressive shrugs. “I’ll be okay.”

She leads him to her door where he puts his hat and coat on. “Thanks, Muss.”

“Any time, Miller,” she says, keeping her voice as level and emotionless as she can manage.

Octavia watches him lope off into the night. She grabs the bottle of whiskey off the table on the balcony and takes a long swallow from it as she watches him disappear into the shadows at the end of the street.

You just escaped something dangerous, she reminds herself. You know he’s no good for you and you’re probably no good for him. She tells herself all sorts of comforting, reasonable things while she stands in her open doorway, holding the bottle. She knows, with every cell of her body, that she did the right thing.

So, if she did the right thing, why does she feel like crying?


End file.
